Paleontologists are still debating whether dinosaurs met their doom quickly or gradually, due to a catastrophic cosmic impact — but thanks to a crazy YouTube video, you can watch the "domino-saurs" die out in a minute and a half.
The way it's portrayed by FlippyCat (a.k.a. Randy Granger of Winnipeg, Canada), a little gray block of dominoes from outer space sets off a chain reaction that spreads across the globe — killing off cute little baby dinosaurs, smashing a big old sauropod to bits and tumbling the bones of a dinosaur skeleton.
It always takes more time to build things up than to knock them down, and that was the case for the demise of the domino-saurs. "This took 38.5 hours of setup time, over about two weeks," FlippyCat wrote. Once you see the behind-the-scenes footage that follows the initial sequence, you'll understand why that is. And you'll probably continue clicking to see some of FlippyCat's other projects, including a domino interpretation of Psy's "Gangnam Style" viral video.
In reality, the death of the dinosaurs took much longer than a minute and a half, and some paleontologists suspect the biggest dinosaurs were already on the way out when that big asteroid hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago.
More about the dinosaurs' demise:
- 'Rock-solid' case: Asteroid killed the dinosaurs
- Theory about dino-killing firestorm questioned
- Some dinosaurs survived asteroid impact
- Were the dinosaurs done in by gas?
Tip o' the Log to Brian Switek at Dinosaur Tracking.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
